Devil Out of Texas
by ReverendKilljoy
Summary: Nick Stokes novella, explaining the short haircut and quieter demeanor. Also, shirtless Nick exercising in the prison yard. Did I not mention prison? Much metacontent,
1. Chapter 1

_Devil Out of Texas, by ReverendKilljoy_

_Embassy Suites Hotel, Houston, Texas_

"Was there anything else you needed, sir?" The woman's voice was lilting, musical, more West Indies than West Texas.

"Just the room, and no calls, please." Nick wanted to close his eyes, wanted to sit cradling his head in a dark room and shut out the world. Instead, hefted his duffle bag and followed the penciled map to his room on the third floor of the downtown hotel.

He opened his door with the keycard, and dropped his bag on the bed nearest the door. Without turning on the light, he went to the window and looked out over the parking lot, the sun just battling through the haze and the tangle of buildings to cast long shadows among the rental cars.

He flipped open his phone and redialed the number from memory.

"Yeah, this is Nick. I'm here. I've been over and over this, and I'm going to do it. Hell no I'm not sure, but I'm going to do it anyway. Yeah, see you at the hospital. Okay. Bye."

He sat on the bed, letting his phone drop from numb fingers onto the coarse, waxy fibers of the bedspread. He knew from his years as a CSI what a typical hotel room looked like, under an ALS, or with a good spray of Luminol. He didn't care.

Sitting up, he reached around to the small of his back, and removed his weapon. He checked the safety. Checked the chamber. Slid it back into his holster and hefted it in his hands. He looked at the nightstand, and at his bag. Finally he shrugged, and settled the firearm back into place.

The shower could wait. He had one more call to make.

"Judge Stokes' office please. No, I just want his voice mail. Thank you." He waited until he heard the familiar voice, his father's assistant Earl.

"Hey, Dad. It's Nick. I'm in Texas, and I didn't want you to hear about it and bug me for not calling. I'm, uh, I'm in Houston." He scratched his fingers through his wavy dark brown hair. What to say? What to leave out?

"Anyway, I won't be in town for long, but I'll call you when I get a chance. Love to mom. Bye."

He watched the shadows shorten in the parking lot, broad grey streaks of pavement between the disorderly rows of salesmen's cars and business rentals, and even a patch of pink Mary Kay Cosmetics Cadillacs, like roses amid the white and tan and silver Fords. After an hour, he went downstairs to meet his ride to the hospital.

- - -

_In a car. Houston, Texas_

Sitting in the back of the Lincoln Town Car, Nick watched idly as the chaos that was Houston slid by his window. The charming lack of effective zoning laws made Houston one of the biggest cities in the U.S., but also put Kinkos' next to libraries and pawnshops next to hospitals. He saw the dun-colored brick wall of Rice University on his left, and he knew they would be at Ben Taub Hospital shortly.

The live oak trees sent impossibly weathered limbs over the walls surrounding the Rice campus. He exerted a little discipline and didn't think about his time there, about listening to the Mob play at Owls' games, about the smartest kids in the southwest playing Frisbee golf on the grounds while debating chemical sterilization for sex offenders as a means of preventing recidivism. About working harder than he had ever had to work before, and being proud of the solid B average that had shocked his parents so much.

He didn't think about nights at House of Pies, ignoring the outrageously gay waiter hitting on him, while he made small talk with a cute pre-law student named… He couldn't think of her name. Alex something? Lisa? A nice girl, anyway, with strawberry kisses and a serious devotion to the second amendment.

They pulled up to the hospital, and the door was opened for him.

He waved away the bright memories of his college days like fireflies on a summer evening. He went into the hospital and took the elevator up to Oncology. He didn't think about college, or about work, or the girls he'd known and the parties he'd skipped to study. He thought about why he was here, and what it meant that he was doing what he had been asked to do.

He wished he'd had somewhere safe to leave his gun. Too late for that now.

- - -

_A private room, Houston, Texas_

The man had a tan face, but not very tan. Blond hair, but not very blond. Tall, but you get the picture. He was generic. He was central casting, when someone says, "Hey, send us a guy." He held a long document with numerous "sign here" and "initial here" flags on it. He held a very nice pen out to Nick, a pen that might be used to sign a trade pact, or a declaration of war. It was heavy and cool in Nick's hand.

"Okay, Nick, I need you to sign this last page. It details the agreement we worked out with you and your attorney, and with Justice Mendoza."

"I know what it says," Nick said, signing the paper. His signature was a little lopsided from the tug of the IV in his arm, but he figured it would do. "Now if you'll get out, I have this thing to do now."

"I just wanted to say, Officer Stokes," the man said formally, but Nick cut him off.

"My name is Nick. Now get out." He laid his head down and let the IV bag drip its contents into the line running into the back of his right hand. The door closed, and he was alone, letting the medication drip. Gravity worked its sweet will, and soon his eyes were drooping. His mouth felt prickly and he wanted to ask for a drink, having forgotten he could not have one.

"What am I doing here?" he whispered hoarsely, slipping into unconsciousness.

- - -

_Another room, Houston, Texas_

The needle slid into Nick's skin, behind the swell of his hipbone known as the iliac crest. It punctured the outer skin, the inner flesh, and muscle, to the bone. The woman maneuvering the needle, which was very long and intimidating, felt the tip strike bone deep inside Nick's body. Shortly, she operated the valve and a deep red fluid, viscous and dark, began to fill the attached container.

After a moment, the flow lessened. She withdrew the needle part way, and changed the angle before driving it home again. Once more, the almost black fluid was drawn into the container. Three times she repeated the procedure, then she withdrew the needle. She chose a spot a few inches closer to his hip, and slid the needle down again into his body.

The trauma to the deep tissues and the broken blood vessels under the flesh caused some swelling and spectacular bruising at the site of the procedure. Before they rolled him to start on his other hip, the first was already darkening with hematomas under the skin.

- - -

_Crime lab, Las Vegas, Nevada_

"And he didn't say anything to you or to Grissom?" Warrick Brown leaned over the door of the coupe they had been processing, shaking his head. "No idea when he'd be back or what was going on?"

"No," said Catherine Willows. "Give it up, Brown. If I had anything I could tell you I would."

"So you _do_ have things you _can't_ tell me," Warrick nodded to himself.

"Give it up, Brown," she repeated tiredly. She went back to dusting the roofline around the A-pillar.

- - -

_Private room, Houston, Texas_

"Sir, can you hear me?"

Nick tried to lick his lips, but his tongue seemed to be stuck to the teeth on one side of his mouth. His eyes, likewise, were stuck shut with kindergarten paste at the eyelashes, and someone had apparently beaten him all over his body with a piece of steel rebar wrapped in rough twine.

"Sir, I need you to let me know if you can hear me?"

A damp cloth slid across his eyes, and he was able to see stark slits of brightness, two crescents of daylight that danced and wavered before stabilizing into a thin slice of ceiling overhead. He saw a woman, a nurse, maybe, leaning over him with a frown.

"Yes," he said at last, his voice a gentle, whispering mockery. "Water?"

"In just a moment. These folks need to say something to you, sir, and then we'll see about getting you something to drink, okay sir?"

He tried to turn his head to follow her exit, but he was unable to move more than a few degrees before the effort was too much. A face swam into focus above him, a dark brown face, with lined brown eyes, almost black, above a sweeping frown like an angel weeping. His voice, when he spoke, was warm and soft and sad all at once, and as deliberate as if he had not a care in the world.

"Nick Stokes, you are under arrest." The old cop's eyes traveled to where a handcuff surrounded Nick's right wrist, the other cuff looped around the railing of his bed.

"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you?"

Nick raised his head slightly, as if to speak. Eyes watering and tongue working dryly in his mouth, he gave up. He closed his eyes and nodded once, twice, slowly.

"Okay, Stokes, let's see about getting you some water." The man stood back, and the nurse was there again, slipping a meager straw full of tepid water up to Nick's lips.

"Here you go, baby. Once we get your mouth squared away, we'll see about getting you some Tylenol for pain, honey."

- - -

_Locker Room, Las Vegas, Nevada_

Judy, the administrative assistant, stood with a bewildered look on her face as her boss, Conrad Ecklie, watched Gilbert Grissom emptying a locker. Ecklie would call out items, and she would log them on her clipboard as Grissom sealed them into bags and placed them into a carton.

"T-shirt, blue." Ecklie sounded bored, and maybe he was bored. Everyone else was still shocked and upset and confused, but Ecklie was ready to move on.

"Running shoes, one pair, white," Ecklie said and Grissom removed the shoes from the bottom of the locker. "Maybe he should have been wearing those on his little vacation."

Grissom made a little noise at the back of his throat, an involuntary sound before he clamped his teeth together and went back to bagging the shoes. As he tipped the left shoe into the bag, he said, "Just a moment."

Reaching carefully inside with gloved fingers, he tipped out a small bar of Ivory soap, still wrapped in its paper. He held it up for Ecklie and Judy to see.

"One bar of soap," Ecklie said with a lopsided sneer. "Guess he better not drop that, huh?"

Grissom stood, looking up into the taller man's eyes for a moment. Grissom's face was an expressionless mask.

"Judy," he said softly, "will you please excuse Conrad and I for a moment?" His eyes never left Ecklie as she moved to go, and even as Grissom slid the bar of soap into the bag, he continued to stare down Ecklie.

"Listen, Gil, I know this guy was a friend of yours, and I know how you feel about your team, but Stokes was a bad guy." He shook his head ruefully as though explaining something to a young child. "For Christ's sake, you don't get sealed Grand Jury indictments and conspiracy charges without a smoking gun, Gil!"

Grissom looked at him. "We haven't seen any evidence. We don't know what's going on, and have been ordered not to ask." Grissom blinked slowly. "No one's talking. But if you ever so much as imply that Nick Stokes is anything but a good CSI and a valuable friend to this department, you will be very, very sorry."

Ecklie puffed up a little, a bantam cock strutting, and looked sidelong at Grissom.

"Are you threatening me, Gil? Has it come to that?"

"No, Conrad. A threat would be, 'Everyone knows you suffer from chronic asthma, and that you wear contacts because your glasses look bad on TV. A little strychnine in your inhaler and you'd appear to be the victim of a massive asthma attack, except for the characteristic constriction of the pupils. A little tincture of belladonna in the contact lens solution will counteract that, and given your medical history, no one would even look for anything. I'd be amazed if they even bothered with a tox screen. And of course if they did, well I guess it would come here, where you have no end of helpful friends…' _That_ would be a threat Conrad."

"You- you'd never dare, Grissom. I'm not afraid of you." His tone belied his words, and his high forehead glistened with sweat in the cool locker-room.

"Of course not. I'm not a criminal mastermind plotting the death of my boss. Let me call Judy back in, Conrad." Grissom's voice had never risen from its soft deliberate tone.

As he reached the door, he turned and took something from his pocket.

"Here, Conrad," Grissom said, tossing Ecklie a small white bottle. "Your contact solution. I'd recommend not leaving that lying around."

Grissom left to find Judy, and Ecklie watched him go, and then looked at the bottle in his hand. He could have sworn that his contact solution was on the shelf over his desk. He looked into the mirror on Stokes' locker door, and was turning his head from side to side examining his pupils when Judy and Grissom returned.

"Are you okay sir?" Judy asked, getting out her clipboard again.

"Fine, fine." Ecklie tried to resume his slightly bored posture from earlier, but it was a brittle façade. He looked down and almost jumped when he realized he still had the white bottle of contact lens solution in his hand. He dropped it into the trash, and turned to see Grissom watching him with a Cheshire grin.

"Let's get this over with," Ecklie blustered. "I have work to do."


	2. Chapter 2

_Harris County Jail, Houston, Texas_

Contrary to the universal depictions on TV, the Harris County lockup did not have the row of booths separated by Plexiglas with telephone handsets on either side. Instead, four rows of cafeteria tables, with uncomfortable benches and indelible plastic tops, were arranged under the watchful eyes of four armed deputies and four surveillance cameras.

Karen Stokes sat at one of the tables, watching her youngest son enter the room, the orange jumpsuit hanging loosely from his wide shoulders. He seemed so young, so innocent. She didn't see a man almost thirty-five years old. She saw her baby boy, the one who always ran to keep up with his brothers, little legs churning as he raced after them down the street.

When he saw her, his face set in that stubborn look she knew so well. He looked exactly like his father when he did that, for good or bad. She rose, and despite all the years she had spent as a public defender, all the times she had been in rooms like this in jails across Texas and much of the southwest, she still moved to hug him as he came to the table.

"Um, Ma'am," said the guard with almost embarrassed formality, nodding to the sign posted on all four walls.

"No touching."

"No loud voices."

"No exchanges of items."

"No photographs or recordings."

"Oh," she muttered, flustered. "Of course. Um, hello, Nicky. We've missed you."

He stood, and might have left, had the guard not placed a hand on his shoulder. Her son looked at the guard, and shrugged. He sat down, handcuffs clanking dully on the plastic tabletop.

The guard took three steps back, to a taped line on the floor, which theoretically offered them a measure of privacy. Karen swallowed hard and tried to sound cheerful.

"I've been over this with your father, and he agrees that we should get Cameron Little to take over your representation, before the arraignment if we can do it. At the very least we need to get you out on bail and home so we can discuss what to do about all of this dreadful mess."

He finally spoke.

"Go home, mom."

"What?" She shook her head. "Now Nicholas, you may think that I'm just another fretful mother looking out for her son, but I've been working as a PD in this state for almost 45 years. I still have my license, and I'll defend you myself if I have to."

"No, mom."

"Your father will resign the bench, Nicholas, if he has to. We're not going to sit here!"

"Yes, you are." He leaned forward, so intently that the polite guard perked up a bit and watched carefully as Nicky spoke in urgent tones to Karen.

"I have to ask you to trust me, mom, and that I know what I have to do. Don't make calls, don't call in favors, and don't say anything to the press or anyone except 'No comment.' I have to know that you'll do that for me, mom."

He waited, looking at her with an intensity she did not remember. Who was he? Who was this young man with the soft voice and the red-rimmed eyes, the outthrust chin and the big hands making and releasing fists on the table? Where was her baby?

"You can't tell me anything at all?" She watched him, watched him struggle for just a moment, and all her years as a lawyer told her that he was trying not to lie to her.

"How's Lauren?" The question caught her off guard. She blinked away a tear and nodded her head.

"She's good. She's sick. Very sick. But good, you know how it is. We, we haven't told her, anything. About this." She gestured vaguely around the room.

"Good." He stood up. "I have to go. Give a message to dad, would you?"

The guard moved in to take Nick by the shoulder and steer him back to the lockup.

Karen rose, and held the edge of the table for support as age and emotion dueled with balance for a moment.

"Tell him I'm pleading guilty. He should know what that means."

She watched, the world spinning slowly around her, as her youngest son was taken back to his cell. She left, passing though the security checkpoints and claiming her purse and phone and keys in a daze.

She headed back to the hotel, wondering what Justice Jack Stokes would have to say when he arrived from Dallas in a few hours. Maybe he'd understand and tell her what was going on. More likely, they'd both put a brave face on it and try to bluff their way through, trusting in the end that they had done their jobs and raised Nick right. She wanted to have faith in him, wanted to believe it would all work out.

In the back of her mind, she saw a four year old with short legs churning, arms pumping, racing down across the lawns of the neighborhood, shouting, "Wait for me! Wait for me!" to the backs of his older brothers.

- - -

_Captain Jim Brass' office, LVPD, Las Vegas, Nevada_

Brass looked into his coffee cup, watching two fingers of bourbon swirl around the indelible stain of too much bad coffee. The sour taste in his mouth had been there all day, but the bourbon wasn't helping.

He took another pull and swallowed, ignoring the taste. That's not what it was for. He looked again into his cup, like reading tealeaves, but the future was a dark stain, drenched in alcohol older than some of his rookies. Maybe there was something to that fortune-telling thing after all.

"Again?" His guest was holding out the bottle, one eyebrow raised. His voice was soft and cold in the dark office, lit only by the glow of the muted TV. They had all been watching the same reports, the local commentary or the live feeds from Dallas.

"No thanks. I'm…" he had been about to say 'I'm good,' but it wasn't true. "I'm tired."

"Me too," allowed his guest, taking another long drink from the cup of bourbon he held, settling his feet back up on Brass' desk. "I thought we'd learn more. Anything. I figured we'd learn something."

"Gil," Brass said, rubbing his red knuckles over his tired eyes, "we learned nothing. Nearly nothing. Sealed indictments, plea bargains. It's got to be drugs, or maybe RICO. Something the Feds leaned on the Dallas PD for, right?"

"Nick drove a cruiser for Dallas PD," Grissom remembered, wearing a groove in the record they had been spinning all day. "Three years, then Houston for the degree, then one year as an intern there, and then here."

Grissom lowered his feet from the desk and finished his drink.

"Son of a judge, former cop, with a conspiracy charge and accessory to conspiracy. How tough is it going to be, Jim?"

Brass closed his eyes. "It's gonna be tough, Gil. Huntsville time is hard time, what the locals call your bad actors. If they leave him in General Population, I give him six months, maybe a year. They put him in Unit 5, with the cop-killers and serial offenders, he actually might do better. More guards, less hanky panky. Still, I give him a year, maybe two."

Gil placed the bottle of bourbon back onto Brass' desk with the deliberation and exaggerated care of the thoughtful drunk.

"They gave him a lot more than two years, Jim."

Brass stood up, and turned off the TV, letting the office fade into darkness as they headed out the door.

"I know they did, Gil. I know."

- - -

_Transfer/Intake Prep area, Huntsville State Penitentiary, Huntsville, Texas_

His biceps, uncovered in the strap-shouldered t-shirt he had been issued, were well muscled but pale, smooth with the pallor of the night shift and four months in lockup prior to the trial. His hands, neat nails and soft fingertips, used to delicate work, but with a few distended knuckles from old injuries, gripped the arms of the barber chair with casual strength.

He knew without being told that the arms of this chair included wrist straps that could have secured a man twice his strength. Instead, he sat, eyes fixed on his reflection in the hazy metal mirror that hung in front of the barber chair.

The barber, a Trustee named Morely with a facial tic and the nimble hands of a pickpocket, ran the clippers from Nick's brow straight up and back over his crown, down to the nape of his neck. Dense, wavy brown hair fell away, and Nick blinked the stray hairs out of his thick lashes.

"So's you got friends here, fish?" Morely spoke softly, not whispering but not calling attention to himself. "Pretty-looking white boy like yourself, you might wanna get yourself some friends here, fish. I could put a word in."

"No thanks." Nick stared straight ahead, holding his own gaze in the mirror and the right side of his scalp was reduced to pale stubble.

"Don't you think you're too smart, fish," Morely droned on, moving to trim off the rest of Nick's hair. "Take more than a flat top cut to get you along inside. It'll take friends, like, uh…"

His words cut off along with his clippers, and he stood back a moment, just for a moment, surprised and a little uncertain. As the hair fell away behind Nick Stokes' left ear, the blued black arms of a swastika tattoo were clearly revealed on his scalp. Nick continued to stare into the mirror, at the lantern jaw and the normally expressive mouth fixed in a thin line, the normally lively eyes now two points of darkness, holes in the cloth of the night, feral and primal and almost deceptively sleepy looking.

Nick stood up.

"I don't need friends, old timer," Nick told the barber, rolling his head from side to side and working the tension out of his neck. "I just need time. Oh, and call me fish or newbie or meat, anything funny like that again? I'll cut out your tongue with your own razor. See you around."

The guards moved in and put his shackles back on, and they moved him across the unit towards the cellblock where he would be spending the next fifteen years of his life, without the possibility of parole. He held his head up, his shoulders back, and he said not a word as they delivered him into the maximum-security block of Unit 5.

- - -

_An Apartment, Las Vegas, Nevada_

She took another sip of wine, the dark red merlot sliding across her tongue and going down easily. She was taking small sips, trying to really taste the wine. She knew that she could very well let another day slip away from her, sitting in her matching black cotton tee and panties, drinking merlot and re-reading the letter.

She held it in her hands, and she felt the contrast of the cheap, slick paper and the expensive, delicate stem of her wine glass. It was almost noon, and she was running out of merlot. Closing her eyes, she unfolded the paper carefully, reluctantly setting down her glass on top of a dog-eared copy of Lee's Crime Scene Handbook.

She opened her eyes, and once more read the words he had written, and had left for her.

_Dear Sara,_

_I'm sorry I can't be there to explain to you, to all y'all, what has happened. Maybe some of it can't be explained. I can't tell you anything here, since if knowledge of this letter were to come out, I'm sure you would be subpoenaed. I don't want anyone else getting into trouble for things I have done._

_You have always been a friend, and I figure you more than most can understand that choices we make, or don't make, well... I don't mean to be cryptic. Maybe someday I'll be able to explain it all for you._

_For now, know this: Many of the things they'll be saying about me aren't true. Sadly, some of them are. All of that aside, I still am the guy you knew, and don't let them make y'all think I was something different._

_Your friend,_

_N_

She looked at her empty glass, and then to the empty bottle. She could either open that bottle of chardonnay and start mixing her wines, of she could take a shower, maybe go for a run. Running would let her work out her anger and her frustration, would sweat out the alcohol and the bitterness.

The chardonnay would numb the pain and the confusion, and let her stay in this reflective place, mulling over what had happened. The chardonnay would buy her another two or three hours, trading weakness for regret and disbelief. Kicking the blanket off her bare legs, she got up off the couch.

She walked past her sweats and running shoes, into the kitchen. She opened the chardonnay.

- - -

_Cell 1138, Huntsville, Texas_

"So, where you from? It true you was a cop once?"

The voice came from below him, high and clear in soft tones. Nick had avoided anything but names when he was brought into his cell, but his cellmate, Tucker, had not given up trying to draw him into conversation. Now, with the lights out on his second night in the cell, Nick was wearing down.

"I hear you're from Texas. Local boy." Tucker could talk for hours, and did, without regard to whether he received any response. "Not me. I'm from Louisiana. Not that crappy Bubba Gump po' white trash shit neither, I'm from Shreveport. Well, that's where I was living before. Originally I'm from Metairie."

"Do you ever shut up?" Nick wondered aloud.

"Well he speaks!" Tucker pounced on Nick's words. "Howdy, partner! Shit, thought I was gonna have to carry both sides of this conversation for the next fifteen years."

"Please, shut up," Nick sighed.

"Well, fuck me for a three-dollar whore, ain't you polite?" Tucker chuckled at his own wit. "Listen pal, you gotta learn, in here you are either begging or ordering. There's no choice C, it's one or the other. Now me, I'm a beggar. The first time I tried ordering somebody around in here, they broke out my front teeth, know what I mean."

Nick knew that convicts would sometimes knock the teeth out of their bitches' mouths, to prevent them from resisting forced oral sex. It had been part of the preparation he had done waiting for his trial, studying the prison culture. He reflexively checked his own teeth with the tip of his tongue.

"Okay, then, shut up." He smirked in the darkness. "That's an order."

"Very funny, Nicky. Funny guy. Tell you what, you talk to Bobby the Wolf like that, some of those wop boys, see how that flies a'ight? Or maybe you want to carve out a piece of the Aryans. I saw the tat when you was sleeping this morning. It'll take a fuck lot more than a tattoo to get in with the Aryans. Them boys is crazy, especially Otto. I heard he had one of his own boys shanked for letting some Latino finish pissing when Otto was on his way to the can. That muthafucker's _harsh_."

"Tucker, you don't shut up and let me sleep, you'll dream of crazy Otto and his boys, got it? He hoped he sounded harsh.

Tucker quieted, muttering for a few more minutes but not trying any more direct chitchat.

Nick stared at the ceiling, letting the dark wrap him like a blanket. Tomorrow, he'd exercise in the yard. Tomorrow he'd meet Otto, or some of his boys. Tomorrow he'd start working on his plan to get out of this place.

Assuming, as always, that he lived through the night.


	3. Chapter 3

_Exercise yard, Unit 5, Huntsville, Texas_

Stripped to the waist, his tee shirt hanging from his back pocket, Nick lay on the weight bench. Although the bar wasn't loaded too much by his usual standards, he was already coated in a treacherously slick sheen of sweat. He raised the bar one last time, sliding it carefully home on the rack. Bench press without a spotter was dangerous, but no more dangerous than being a pale white boy exercising half naked in front of Pablo Hinojosa or Malcolm Assam, the leaders of the Latino and Black Muslim prison factions, respectively.

Assam sent one of his minions over, to stand over Nick as he wiped the sweat from his face with the back of one hand.

"Yeah?" Nick asked, glancing up but not standing, which would have put him toe to toe with the large, neatly dressed prisoner.

"Brother Assam notices you," the man said smoothly, with a trace of accent, something almost musical that was unique to prison Muslims, passed from elder to student along with the Koran and the teachings of Elijah Mohammed.

"Is that right?" Nick kept his voice neutral.

"You have the ink, but Brother Assam wonders if you have the attitude." The mad was carefully not staring at or pointing out the swastika tattoo on Nick's scalp.

"You tell Brother Assam I got all the attitude I need. Anything else?"

"That was all." The man's eyes flickered down and took in Nick's posture. The man appeared unimpressed. He turned sharply and returned to the side of Malcolm Assam. Assam continued to coolly regard Nick as the man bent and spoke softly to him.

Nick decided it was about time to get cleaned up. There were guards posted by the showers, but he felt he stood a better chance going now while traffic was light than by waiting till the exercise period was over.

He tried not to look over his shoulder as he entered the shower room, wondering if Assam and his men were still watching him. He knew he was an unknown quantity to the power elite inside the prison, and they would not let that continue for long. Pretty soon he better find a way to approach Otto and the Aryan Brotherhood.

- - -

_Unmarked Dallas Police Car, outside City Hall, Dallas, Texas._

The cell phone chirped softly once, twice.

"Yes?" the detective answered tersely.

"It's going down. Have the money ready." The caller spoke calmly, with assurance and with authority, not with bravado.

"You'll be paid when it's over. Not before. Don't call this number again. I'll be in touch."

The detective hung up, and sat, fingers drumming on the wheel. The angular shadow of City Hall slowly leaned across Marilla Street.

- - -

_Shower room, Unit 5, Huntsville, Texas_

Nick ducked his head under the spray to clear the soap off his forehead and the shampoo off his hair, and that's when they hit him. Something hard and dull and wet smacked him sharply at the base of his skull, driving him face first into the exposed pipe of the shower line.

Eyes filled with reflex tears, sweat and soap, Nick staggered, reaching out for the wall to steady himself. A heavy hand clapped down on his wrist, wrenching his arm behind his back and driving his face again into the pipe. Knees wobbly, ears ringing, Nick held on desperately to consciousness.

The arm pinned behind his back twisted, and a kick to his kneecap drove him to the floor of the doorless shower stall. Through the spots swimming through his vision, he could see the guard by the door turned half away, intently staring at the floor. Next to him was the spare form of Otto, leader of the Aryan Brotherhood, his pale, hairless scalp shining dimly in the fluorescent lighting of the shower block.

"You come to Otto's house, with ink like that, and you don't say hello?" The voice came softly, almost gently into Nick's right ear. The man, standing behind him, still holding him by the arm in a locked grip, must be Hammacker, Otto's chief enforcer.

"I didn't mean any disrespect ahhhh!" Nick's attempt to reason with Hammacker was cut short by a twist of his arm. He could actually feel the tendons stretching in his shoulder and elbow. All feeling was gone already in his hand and forearm. He knew he had a finite amount of time to do something before he blacked out.

"No, pretty boy. You don't talk. You listen. They say you were some cop, before. They say you were some kind of Highland Park fancy boy before. Well, that was before. You ain't shit but a bitch, now." Hammacker rolled his tongue wetly across Nick's cheek and the lobe of his ear.

"Say it. Say you're a bitch, now." Hammacker tightened his grip even more. Nick grasped for his only chance, to make the man angry enough to make a mistake. Or to kill him, either way Nick would be out of his current situation.

"Okay. You're a bitch now," Nick said, trying not to flinch at the blow he knew was coming. He saw something coming out of the corner of his eye and at least he knew what he was being beaten with. A bar of soap, wrapped in a wet sock to make a very effective sap.

The soap impacted on his temple and he slumped to the floor, the room tilting crazily overhead. He saw the guard, still looking away, and Otto, arms folded across his chest, looking oddly disappointed.

He must have blacked out for a moment, because when he regained a sense of his situation, Hammacker was squatting in front of him. The man had one meaty hand around Nick's throat, and the other was jerking down his rough denim pants. Nick could clearly see the downy blonde hairs covering the man's buttock.

"Smart-ass little bitch," Hammacker was muttering over and over. "Smart-ass, _Smart_-ass little bitch. See how a mouthful of white power ass tastes, you little fucker."

As Chris Rock famously reported, there is a reason convicts prefer forcing new men to "toss their salad," forced rimming of their anus, to forcing the new men to perform oral sex: When you're sucking a man's dick, you can pretend it's something else; when you're eating ass, you _know_ it's ass.

Hammacker made one mistake, angry as he was. He relaxed his grip around Nick's throat to get his pants down far enough to smother Nick with his unwashed backside. Without a moment's thought, Nick made his move.

Hammacker screamed, and tried to lunge forward, dragging Nick with him. The guard belatedly sprang to action, rushing forward to flail at Nick with his nightstick, swearing shrilly. He pulled at Nick, dragging him out of the stall and into the changing area. He continued to swear and beat at Nick with his stick in his free hand. The blows rained down on Nick's ribs, driving him into a fetal position against the wall of cubicles that served for lockers.

"Enough." Otto spoke for the first time. He was still standing, arms crossed, in the spot he had been in before. His milky blue eyes twinkled with interest.

The guard looked up, and lowered his stick. He released Nick and resumed his position by the door after a curt nod from Otto. The Aryan leader smiled a slow Cheshire smile.

"I like your style, kid. You got style out the ass." Otto turned to look at where Hammacker was still howling in the shower stall. "Tell you what, Stokes, you spit out that testicle and come by my cell. We'll talk business."

Blood framing his mouth, and welling from a cut over his eye, Nick grinned weakly at him. As he grinned, more blood that was not his trickled from one corner of his mouth and down his chin.

- - -

_Prison infirmary, Huntsville, Texas_

"Tip your head back," said the doctor, looking at the ragged gash over Nick's right eye. Even as she sutured and swabbed him, the young doctor was careful to keep her hands away from his mouth, and to ever let her body block the line of sight between her patient and the armed guard leaning against the wall of the infirmary.

Nick looked up, and closed his eyes against the bright lights of the treatment room. The cool sting of the needle closing up his scalp was lost under the dull ache of his ribs, at least one of which was cracked, and the more percussive pain in his temples that matched his still-elevated heartbeat. Doctor Doyle critically regarded her handiwork, and put away her needle.

"Still not wanting to share how you got your little booboo?" Her voice was tired, crusted with a salty grit of pessimism far too old for her years. She stepped back and admired the job she had done on Stokes.

"Well, if your goal was to stop you being pretty, Mr. Stokes, I'd say we failed. You keep that clean and don't pull at the stitches you might not even scar. You're a lucky man."

Nick said nothing, and stood up slowly and deliberately. He stood, the chain linking his cuffs to his shackles with just a little tension on it, and waited while the doctor signed him back over to the guard.

"Thanks, Maggie," the guard said, "That was quick. I owe you a Starbucks."

"Double soy latté and you're on," she said with a slightly gap-toothed grin. She sighed and picked up another chart. "Time to check Mr. Hammacker. If he's really out of shock we need to start him on morphine."

Nick watched her leave, and he felt the eyes of the guard on him. Nick nodded once and began walking carefully towards the stairwell that would lead them down and, shortly, back to Unit 5.

"Pretty. You look like cold, dry shit to me," muttered the guard after he called in to have the stairwell door opened. Together they walked, the chain between Nick's shackles rattle-sweep, rattle-sweeping across the sealed concrete floor. As the stairwell door closed behind them, the guard leaned close and suddenly whispered in Nick's ear.

"Do you miss the salsa at Ninfa's?" The question caught Nick unawares and he nearly stumbled. The cool green salsa of the famous Houston eatery was in fact something he had missed even in Las Vegas.

"Not, um," Nick stammered, trying to fight of fatigue and stress, "Not as much as I miss Cowboy games."

The guard reached a hand out and steadied Nick, who was swaying alarmingly at the top pf the stairs. He whispered again, urgently.

"Keep walking. We can't be late and we don't have much time. Is everything okay?"

"Fuck no," Nick muttered explosively. He took a few shallow breaths and began descending the stairs.

"It's going," Nick admitted through clenched teeth as he lowered himself down the steel-capped stair treads. "Otto hasn't said anything. No one's talking till they see if I have any juice with Otto."

"Okay, I'll pass it along. Hang in there kid."

"Yeah, about that," Nick said, reaching the bottom stair and turning slightly towards the guard.

The guard pushed Nick against the kickbar of the door, making Nick suck in a pained breath as his ribs pressed against the exit. He lost his balance and spun out the doorway into the hard baked clay of the yard. He sank to his knees, gasping.

"On your feet, convict," snarled the guard, jerking Nick roughly to his feet and propelling him towards the opposite side of the courtyard by planting a hand between Nick's shoulder blades and shoving. "The chains stay on till you're back in the unit."

Unwilling to let his head hang where other might see him, Nick trotted across the yard, eyes up and jaw muscles working, grinding his teeth. He hadn't really even noticed the guard's face, and with the sun dazzling him now in the yard he knew he might not get another look. The smell of the baked clay that crunched under his feet, and feel of the sun on his face reminded Nick, for just a moment, of home.


	4. Chapter 4

_Nick,_

_I am respecting the request of your attorney and have agreed to refer all questions and requests for comment to her office. I know Grissom has had a call from the DA in Texas informing him that all department inquiries must go through channels. We think he is losing the fight with the urge to call in favors, and I reminded him of your father's stated wish that we stay away from the case._

_That said, I want you to know how difficult it is to do nothing, to trust that you know what you are doing. Not because I doubt you- you have proven to me in our years of friendship to be a smart, resourceful individual with bottomless reserves of compassion and loyalty. _

_Like Grissom tells us, _"Timendi causa est nescire."

_When you need us, call. We are here._

_Sara Sidle_

_Las Vegas,_

_Nevada_

- - -

_Six years earlier. Oaklawn neighborhood, Dallas, Texas_

"Freeze, police!" The young cop, Nick Stokes, held his flashlight steady but there was the slightest waver of fear and excitement in his voice. In front of him, his partner was slowly advancing on the two young men who had been breaking into the parked Pontiac.

"Raise your hands over your heads, boys," she said, edging around to one side to keep her partner's line of sight clear. As she came abreast of the two men, she saw a dull gleam of metal and body language that was wrong, very wrong. Just as she pulled her own weapon, she heard Nick shout, "Gun!"

Very quickly, the shorter of the two men turned towards her, his weapon swinging up. His companion turned the opposite way and started to reach into his belt. She fired, two shots, at the shorter man. The 9mm slugs entered through his sternum and under his clavicle. Both bullets tumbled upon hitting bone.

A tumbling bullet releases huge amounts of kinetic energy into the flesh of the target, creating a process known as hydrostatic shock. An overpressure wave tears like a tsunami through the soft tissues, causing injury akin to being stuck by a sledgehammer. The young man was dead before his body could fall the meter and a half to the pavement.

"Freeze, freeze! Don't move!" Nick was screaming and advancing towards the taller man who had spun away to the ground. He had his own pistol out

"Oh my god, oh Jesus, oh my god," the taller man was repeating over and over. Nick could see the spreading stain where the man had wet himself. There was already a puddle of blood stretching lazily towards the man from his fallen partner.

"Sanchez, you okay?" Nick yelled over his shoulder, reaching with one hand to grab his cuffs as he kept his Glock trained on the suspect. "Sanchez, talk to me, are you okay?"

"Yeah," something in her voice made Nick snap a quick look in her direction. She was standing over the body of the shorter man, who from this distance was obviously no older than 18 or 20. In his hand, he held a bent piece of flexible spring steel with a duct tape handle on one end. It was a slimjim, used for popping locks on automobiles, not at all unlike the one Stokes kept in the back of his truck for emergencies.

"Where's his weapon, Sanchez?" Stokes asked, cuffing the young man who had been reaching into his belt. From his hands, Nick took a wallet, which he must have pulled from his belt as he turned. The guy couldn't be more than 18, and was probably a lanky sixteen or seventeen.

"He… I don't see it," she said dully. "It must have slid under the car."

"Oh my god, you shot Deandre! You fucking shot him, oh Christ." The cuffed man was sobbing. Nick checked his wallet for ID.

"Okay, Marcellus, tell us what the hell you guys were doing, ok?"

"I locked my keys, man, and Deandre said he could open it for me. Is he alive? Call 911, man, you gotta call 911." He grew more agitated. "Deandre! Hold on, cuz! We gonna get you some help. What the fuck is happening?"

Sanchez looked into the car, and saw a set of keys dangling from the ignition. There was no sign of a gun, and there was a high school jacket on the back seat with the name "Marcellus" clearly visible over the letter for track.

"Oh, shit," Sanchez breathed softly.

- - -

_Home of Catherine Willows, Las Vegas, Nevada_

The doorbell startled her, and she jerked guiltily. Her daughter, who had been reading a magazine on the couch, laughed at her nervousness.

"Mom, you look so busted!" She tried to see what her mom had in her hands that she was so secretive about. Her mother folded the envelope and tossed it into her briefcase.

"Lindsey, could you get that?" Catherine nodded towards the door as she locked her briefcase and slid it under the table. She had a small office in her bedroom, but despite the larger floor plan made possible when she accepted Sam Braun's money, neither Catherine nor Lindsey had quite broken the habit of living full time in the front room as they had in their previous apartment.

Lindsey tossed her magazine aside and bounced up and over to the door.

"You are so not fun any more, mom," she said, opening the door.

Warrick Brown, wearing a thin black leather jacket over his blood red shirt, cocked an eyebrow at Catherine as he entered.

"Yeah, mom, when are you going to start being fun again?"

"Don't you start, Warrick." Catherine gave him a weary smile. She had agreed to go hear an old friend of his play piano tonight, but time had gotten away from her.

She grabbed her jacket and kissed Lindsey goodbye. It was still early afternoon and she expected to be home right after dinner. Her mother had promised to drop by with Chinese food and check on Lindsey for her later.

A few minutes after they left, Lindsey was sitting at the table, looking through her mom's briefcase, a bent wire close at hand to lock it again when she was finished. Her father had taught her a few things they didn't teach at her fancy new prep school. She wanted to see what had been nagging at her mom since she got home that morning.

She opened the letter.

"_Miss Catherine Willows,"_

"_My office has been instructed to notify you that, in the event of the death of Nicholas Brendan Stokes, we are to provide you with a key to open the container left by him in your possession. Alternately, you may request us, at our expense, to collect the container and hold it until the conditions specified by Mr. Stokes or his estate. Please contact us within forty eight hours if you wish us to collect the container left to you by Mr. Stokes."_

"_Sincerely, Mr. Leslie Cummings, Esq."_

"_Baranduyn, Cummings and Baranduyn, LLC."_

- - -

_Outside "The Gypsy Tea Room" Club, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas_

The detective sat in the back seat of the Cadillac Escalade, watching through the tinted windows as the club across the street began to fill up. Deep Ellum had been an artistic and musical enclave in Dallas for generations. In the '20s legendary blues man Blind Lemon Jefferson had been discovered here. Over the last 20 years, Deep Ellum had seen a transformation from bohemian enclave to skater punk hangout to fringe eclectic scene, but there were always clubs, always house bands and white collar kids blowing off steam along side more authentic dangerous bad boys.

The Escalade belonged to one of the latter, a young man named Martin Hinojosa, who had put a truly spectacular juvie record behind him and stayed ostensibly clean through the first four years of his majority. A clean record and one season of minor league baseball in the Rockies farm system did not, however, explain a fully pimped-out Cadillac being driven by a 22-year old kid.

The detective looked on the floor of the back seat and noticed Martin's baseball bat. That bat had once driven a line drive double of a spring training pitch by Curt Schilling. It had also broken the knees of more than one potential informant at the behest of the detective.

The driver's door opened, and a stocky, powerfully built young man slid behind the wheel. He was only slightly thicker around the middle than he had been when he played every day, but there was something around his eyes that told an experienced observer that Martin Hinojosa was going to get soft, some day.

The detective leaned forward and spoke softly into Martin's ear.

"Nick Stokes is still alive."

Martin jumped and twisted, banging his funny bone on the leather covering the doorsill and nearly flinging his keys into the back seat. He was still breathing hard and trying to regain his composure when he saw the detective, and shook his head.

"Jesus, you trying to scare me to death?" Martin looked around, flexing his fingers to stop the sting from his elbow. Away from the street lamps and under the percussive sound of amplified _conjunto_ music coming from the club, he was pretty sure no one could see or hear him talking to the detective.

"Not exactly," said the detective. The .22 semiautomatic pistol, slid between the seat and seat rest, produced almost no visible flash and only two muted "pop" sounds as the detective murdered Hinojosa.

The detective reached forward quickly and grabbed Hinojosa by the shoulder with one strong, latex-gloved hand, sliding the body down and away from the wheel. No sense in letting his body fall against the horn and ruin a stealthy transaction.

Peeling off the gloves and dropping them along with the pistol on the back seat, the detective slipped calmly out of the Escalade and circled the club on foot, heading for the DART station at Elm and Good-Latimer. There was a bus that would lead to the light rail Red Line, and so out to the suburbs.

It is possible to lift prints or even DNA-bearing epithelial cells from inside discarded latex gloves. Before boarding the bright yellow and white bus, the detective removed a second, inner pair of latex gloves, and dropped them casually in a public trashcan. In a few minutes the bus arrived at the train station.

The train was on time, and before midnight the detective was home in the North Dallas suburb of Plano, watching the local news on TiVo with a beer in one hand and a remote in the other. The discovery of Hinojosa's body was the number-three story, with a bullet.

- - -

_Cell 1886, Huntsville, Texas_

Otto Schillinger stood beside the bunk in his cell, reading information from a manila folder. His eyes, ice blue peering out from basset hound folds, tracked slowly along the photocopied pages in the folder.

The folder lay open on the upper bunk, and Otto read each page carefully before turning to the next. His current cellmate, a bitch named Riley, lay on the floor next to the immaculately made up lower bunk. Riley slowly cleaned Otto's shoes with long, slow licks of his broad flat tongue.

Otto stood with a self-disciplined posture that informed his spare frame with authority disproportionate to his average size. He looked up when his latest lieutenant, an albino body builder named Petersen, ducked his cropped head into the cell.

"Yes?" Otto continued to read.

"Stokes is here, Otto. Should I send him in?" Petersen was too tentative. He knew he had only advanced to serve Otto because Hammacker was lying in the infirmary, minus some important hardware. Otto knew he needed to either break Petersen soon, or else set him some task to elevate the boy to a man's position in the Brotherhood.

"Just a moment." Otto looked thoughtfully at the last page, and closed the folder on the Dallas Police Department confidential personnel records of Nicholas B, Stokes.

Otto nodded to Petersen. "Send him to me."

Nick entered a moment later, his face impassive as he noted Riley performing his chore. He looked to Otto, his hands at his sides.

"You suggested I come to see you, sir?" Nick's voice was nervous, but not unusually so. Otto made people more than a little on edge.

"First of all, no one calls me sir. White men, good Aryan men like yourself, are my brothers, and call me Otto. As for the niggers and the kikes and spics and mongrel trash that fill this miserable place, what they call me isn't really important, is it?"

"No, sir… Otto."

"You were a cop, Stokes." The camaraderie of brotherhood did not work in both directions. Hammacker, Petersen, Stokes. He wondered if Stokes was bright enough to pick up on that. His records indicated high intelligence but average grades.

"I was. A long time ago."

"Then you went to Vegas and were a cop again, Stokes."

Nick blinked, and smiled tentatively. "A criminalist. I worked in a lab, fingerprints, DNA, that kind of thing."

"You carried a badge and a gun, stokes. Don't bullshit me, or this will take a long time. I have all the time in the world. You might not." Otto turned and picked up the closed file, kicking Riley in the face as he did so. Riley scooted on his haunches across the floor, keeping his cheek pressed to the floor. Once Otto returned his attention to Stokes, Riley resumed his endless labor.

"And about six years ago, you got a notation in your jacket from DPD. You killed a negro boy." It wasn't a question.

"If I did, Otto, he needed killing." Nick stood a little straighter.

"Good answer." Otto put his hands on his hips and pursed his pale lips as he regarded Stokes. "So tell me why you're here."

Nick shrugged. "You know that. You know everything that happens here."

Otto squinted dangerously. "Humor me."

"Some cases, back when I was a cop in Dallas, might not have stood up. Especially against Latinos and niggers." The word came easily to him. "I made sure they did."

"Evidence tampering, intimidating witnesses?" Otto knew that this was the core of the case against Stokes, despite the seals on the Grand Jury accounts.

"Whatever it took." Nick shrugged, and idly scratched behind his ear where the tattoo was still visible under the stubble growing out. "It's not like they were white people."

"I see. But your partner is out there, and you're in here. She didn't know?"

Nick's face grew stony, and Otto could tell he was chewing old bile.

"She was a woman, a Latina, and sleeping with the watch commander. I was expendable, and my daddy had used up all his favors."

"Burying the shooting- of the nigger boy," Otto said shrewdly. He'd wondered why Judge Stokes hadn't pulled more strings. Looks like the bastard had cut loose his own son. That might work to Otto's favor, if he could find a way to play on it.

"Something like that," Nick admitted sadly.

"Well, Stokes, we might have some use for you yet. Tell Petersen to introduce you around." Otto's expression clearly told Stokes that he was dismissed.

"Thank you, Otto. I hope I can be valuable to you in some way."

Stokes left, and Otto turned to regard Riley, who grinned both nervously and toothlessly up at him.

"Oh for Christ's sake, bitch, put on some clothes and go get me some more cigarettes."


	5. Chapter 5

_CSI Lab Offices, Las Vegas, Nevada_

Gil Grissom sat at his desk. Surrounded by paperwork and unfilled reports, his thoughts kept straying to the book in his bag. He finally admitted defeat, or at least a stalemate, with his record keeping, and pulled out the soft-cover book.

"Leisure reading?" Catherine, fatigue accenting the growing collection of tiny creases around her eyes, leaned in his doorway.

"Stephen Gould," Grissom waved the book vaguely at her. "The Panda's Thumb."

"Ah. Evolutionary biologist, right?" She slid inside and collapsed slowly but gracefully onto his couch. He'd always admired the way Catherine moved. Not in a purely sexual way, but just the elegant mechanics of it. Good design was good design.

"Actually I think he's a geologist, but he's written extensively on ethics, evolution, even the reconciliation of science and religion." Grissom looked at the book for a moment, and set it down.

"He argues here that two mechanisms that appear to be the same, and to perform the same function, do not necessarily come from the same origin. Selection pressures final forms, but origins shape underlying structures."

"You're thinking about Nick again." She closed her eyes and let the burden of the past months press her deeper into the sofa.

"I look back at his work, at what I know of him, and I just can't believe I was that wrong. I see the person he was here and I can't conceive of an underlying structure that is so different as to explain everything that happened."

He closed his eyes. He rubbed his temple pensively with the thumb of one hand while weighing the book idly in the other.

"I have trouble living in a world where I can be this wrong," he admitted at last.

Catherine grinned at the unbridled hubris implied in this statement, yet she also understood the sweetness of spirit, the desire to understand and empathize that informed it. Grissom was a densely complicated man, but he was also a good man, and a good friend. She knew he would never let go of Nick Stokes. None of them could.

"Let's go drink some Coronas and raise a toast towards Texas." She stood slowly, reversing her earlier collapse by unfolding her long legs like an origami crane. "Maybe we'll feel better."

"I doubt it." He looked around the office. For once, he wanted to be out of the lab, out of work. "Make it tequila, I'm off tomorrow."

- - -

_Cell 1138, Huntsville, Texas_

Nick lay on his bunk, staring at the dark ceiling and trying to process everything that had happened to him during and after his meeting with Otto and the Aryan brothers.

"That," he sighed softly, "was some truly surreal shit."

"So, it true?" Tucker's voice floated up suddenly from the bunk beneath him. Nick had thought Tucker was asleep, but the wiry man never seemed to really sleep.

"You had a visit with Otto, like in his actual cell?" Tucker sounded impressed.

"Yeah," Nick told him, grudgingly glad to share the experience with someone. "He had some naked guy tongue-washing his shoes the entire time I was there, and he had files, like actual files in folders."

"No shit?" Tucker sucked in air through his teeth and hummed tunelessly for a while. "That's not how it works, man. That shit ain't right."

Nick rolled over on his side, letting his bicep be his pillow as he talked softly to his cellmate.

"How do you mean?" he asked at last.

"This fish, Snowe, something like that. He had a cell down by Bobby the Wolf and his boys. He had photos, like his family and what, and actual clean sheets, clean clothes. Had him magazines and like books and all."

"Yeah, and?" Nick prompted. Usually the trick was getting Tucker to shut up, but this story he seemed oddly shy about telling.

"Well, some of Bobby's goombas, they tell his cellmate to grab a smoke. Six guys rush this fish, bang bang bang. Strip him, beat him, fuck him, and piss in his bed. Just like that, bang bang bang, you know? I get back from smoking, there he is, naked in a bed of piss and bleeding out his ass."

"Harsh," Nick said.

"No, that's just it, man. He wanted too much, and he got what was coming to him. So Otto? What kind of Hannibal evil genius prince of darkness shit juju you gotta have to pull off that scene you saw, in here? It just ain't right, man."

"I suppose you have to know someone," Nick allowed.

"Knowing people is for shit, Nicky. Hell, _I_ know people. To live like that, in here- you got to _be_ someone."

"Well, I'm someone, Tucker, so just go back to sleep."

"That's just it, Nicky. You think you're someone, you act like someone, but they're just waiting to prove you're nothing. You're just some harsh acting fish with attitude like you used to be somebody, and they gonna fuck you up."

After a while, listening to his heartbeat in his own ears and the muttering background noise of Tucker winding down, Nick fell asleep. He dreamed of eggs and toast and hot coffee with lots of sugar.

- - -

_Unit 5, Huntsville, Texas_

Luke Carina was 28, and had been a corrections officer in Unit 5 for three years. The first in his family to go to college, Luke had been a promising linebacker for two seasons at Texas A&M. His junior year, during two-a-days, he had missed a tackle and landed badly on his left knee. His ACL had healed, but he'd never been the same player, and his pro football aspirations had vanished along with his scholarship during his senior year.

He'd managed to salvage enough credits and scraped together enough money to finish his abbreviated college run with an associate's degree in Criminal Justice and a recommendation from an alumni group to the warden at Huntsville. By the time he was working in Unit 5, Carina appeared to have his life back on track.

Carina also had almost twenty grand in gambling debts, and was working on an increasingly expensive addiction to prescription painkillers. He took more Vicodin now as a 180-pound guard than he ever had as a 235-pound linebacker. He also took money from certain individuals, usually in the form of credit towards the interest on his debts, to perform a few services for guests of Unit 5 that they might not normally be able to procure for themselves.

Today, all he had to do was hand a sealed envelope to an inmate for delivery to Robert Volpe. Luke was still at least a little cautious, and had run the envelope through the mailroom x-ray when no one was around. He didn't know who was sending Bobby the Wolf a cell phone, but for a $2000 vig payment, he didn't really care.

He left the envelope in an inmate's cell during a routine search. Within twenty minutes, it was in the hands of Bobby the Wolf.

- - -

_Cell 1492, Huntsville, Texas_

Bobby took the phone into his cell. He got maybe one bar of signal strength, but if he didn't move around much it should be enough. The phone itself was a knockoff Motorola, disposable, and about as untraceable as a Saturday Night Special with the serial number ground off.

He flipped it open and hit "redial."

"_Hello."_ He knew that voice.

"I was told you'd be expecting my call," Bobby said, running his fingertips in a lazy pattern across the top of the small table he used as a desk in his cell. His position was not without certain amenities.

"_Stokes is still alive."_

Bobby smiled, without warmth or humor. "I had noticed that. But I figured, fuck I care?"

The voice on the other end was quick and cool.

"_If that situation were to change, I would be very grateful."_

"Again," Bobby said patiently, "fuck I care?"

"_The guy who gave you up, Bobby, who put you in there so he could take a nice cozy deal from the Feds with a shiny new car and a shiny new name? I know where the Feds hid him. You fucking care now?"_

Bobby the Wolf sat for a moment, staring into a bright and bloody future. He forgot, for a few seconds, that he was still on the phone. He shook himself slightly like a dog coming out of water.

"Deal."

"_I leave it to you."_ The connection went dead.

Bobby the Wolf motioned in Segundo, his right hand man. The younger man waited with endless patience while Volpe thought and drummed his fingers. Finally, Bobby the Wolf dropped the cell on the floor, where Segundo unhesitatingly crushed it to high tech rubble beneath his foot.

"Stokes," Bobby the Wolf said softly. "_Grazie_."

"_Prego_, Primo."


	6. Chapter 6

_Cell 1138, Huntsville, Texas_

Tucker was on Nick's bed, feeling with his fingertips under the mattress frame for anything Nick might have hidden. He was working quickly, and hoping that to an observer below he might appear to be Stokes, either sleeping or maybe having one off.

"Stokes?" The whisper came from below. Tucker froze.

"It's me, but don't turn around." Tucker knew that voice. One of the guards? But which one?

"Our contact wanted me to tell you, good news. Looks like your sister is gonna make it, maybe she'll be home when we get you outta here."

There was a soft rustling, and Tucker, slipped carefully back down to his own bunk, watching the guard retreating down the cellblock. So, Nick Stokes had a guard looking out for him, and thinking he was going home? Tucker whistled tunelessly as he pondered this bit of news.

- - -

_Franklin Building, 204th Court, Dallas, Texas_

"Your Honor? This was just delivered to the courthouse."

"Thank you, Earl." Judge Matt Stokes took a look at the contents of the envelope, and nodded to his assistant. He had been expecting something like this.

He sat at his desk, with a picture of the current president over one shoulder, and his degree from UTEP over the other. Despite his expectations, the reality was a little overwhelming.

He blew his nose loudly into a handkerchief, and settled his reading glasses on the end of his nose. He'd had LASIK to correct the far-sightedness but he still needed the glasses for newsprint.

The Dallas Morning News headline was simple: "Disgraced Cop Dead in Prison."

The article was straightforward.

"_Huntsville, TX-_

_Nicholas Stokes, 34, formerly of the Dallas Police Department, was found dead in his cell in the maximum-security wing of the state penitentiary early this morning. The body was discovered during a routine search when Stokes did not report for a scheduled exercise period. Preliminary cause of death appears to be asphyxiation due to hanging, but the investigation is ongoing._

"_Mr. Stokes was discovered hanging from the bed frame by a noose constructed from torn clothing," says Detective Tony Zuiker. "We may never know for certain the events of the last few hours of his life."_

_Stokes, imprisoned after a plea bargain on conspiracy and obstruction of justice charges, was the son of Judge Matthew Stokes, 204th Court, Dallas. He is survived by his parents and six siblings…"_

The article was dated for the following week. Underneath were a phone number and a printed message: "It doesn't have to end this way."

Judge Stokes folded the paper carefully and set it on his desk. He put his reading glasses back in his shirt pocket. He dialed the phone number.

"_Yes?"_

The voice was muffled, unrecognizable.

"This is Judge Stokes. I got your message."

There was a pause, perhaps of gloating.

"_So, you understand, when it comes to your son, Judge Stokes-"_

Stokes interrupted the speaker. "My son is already dead to me. Goodbye."

He hung up the phone, and stared at it for a long while. He took his cell out of his desk drawer, where he kept his phone and keys while wearing his robes or working around the office. He dialed from memory.

"This is Judge Stokes. It's started."

He hung up the phone. He went to the small sink in what used to be the wet bar in his office. He didn't drink, hadn't for years, but he still stocked the sink with a few odds and ends. He took a small bottle of mouthwash out of the cabinet and took a pull straight from the bottle. The medicinal mint flavor burned his gums but not his tongue, scorched by too many jalapeño peppers over the years.

He spit a mixture of bile and mouthwash into the sink, and blotted at his mouth with his handkerchief. The tears in his eyes refused to fall, so he ignored them. He went back to work.

- - -

_Exercise yard, Unit 5, Huntsville, Texas_

Nick stood, stripped to the waist, with sweat sliding off his body like rain off the hood of a finely engineered German sports car. When it got this hot out, there is no real difference between workout sweat and lying around sweat, so you might as well workout. Nick rolled his head and heard the tension crackling. He raised his gloves again, chomped his mouthpiece and leaned into the heavy bag.

He'd never gone in much for boxing. Nick's shoulders were too broad and his arms too short, relative to the ideal fighter's build, to make a great boxer. Still, there was something very satisfying about working a series of jabs into the heavy bag, feeling the pop when he connected just right, with a snap at the end of the jab.

He flexed his knees and varied his angle and distance, but he didn't have any real footwork to speak of. He didn't have a killer instinct, or a naturally dangerous air about him. But he was young, and very fit, and surrounded by murderers and rapists and pedophiles, so he was managing to look like God's own killing machine, if that's what it took.

Across the yard, a heavyset Hispanic man with elaborate tattoos covering his torso and arms was slowly curling free weights. As the most feared, and most respected member of the Latino population in Unit 5, Pablo Hinojosa was given plenty of room. He watched the slow white boy, trying to look tough at the heavy bag.

He thought about what he had learned that morning, and he watched the white boy. They said he had Aryan ink and had met with Otto. Pablo knew better than to screw with Otto. There just wasn't any profit in it. Pablo watched, and lifted the weights in either hand and thought.

He thought about the judge who had put him in Huntsville. He thought about the years he had been marking time, waiting for the chance to make things right. And now, here was this boy, this slow white boy with a decent jab but no right hand at all.

Tonight, it would be time to make things right.

- - -

_Cell 1138, Huntsville, Texas_

"Hey, Nick, I got a question for you," Tucker started in before Stokes had even entered the cell. "You got friends, right? Connections, family, right?"

"Not really," Nick said flatly. He was tired and his shoulders were sore from the workout. Dinner had been plain but edible, and he was fighting the combination of fatigue and stress. "I mean, I wound up here, right?"

"Listen man," Tucker whined, "I know you have connections. Your old man, he's a judge, your mom's some hot shit Public Defender?"

"Let it go, Tucker," Nick warned, clambering up onto his bed.

"You got to help a buddy out, right? I got a hearing coming next month, and I figure since we been so cool, you'll help a buddy out, right?"

"Let it go, all right?" Nick's irritation was clear as he snorted dismissively. "Go to sleep."

Tucker squinted at him, and eyed the cell door sidelong. They had about twenty minutes till lockdown and lights out, but a lot of convicts were already sleeping, trying to avoid the heat by reducing their activity. Unlike daytime, at night it was actually possible to cool off by basking reptile-like on their beds, motionless in the gloom.

"Fine, man. Fine. I'm gonna grab a smoke, before light out." He took a last look at his cellmate, and shook his head. "I'll, uh, be back."

As Tucker ducked through the door, he saw the heavyset frame of Jerry DePinto, better known as Segundo, and his goombas, climbing down the metal stairs from the upper gallery. Segundo had four or five guys with him, and they moved like they were listening to their own personal soundtracks, probably something from "Godfather II." They swaggered silently down the steps and onto the walkway that led to Cell 1138.

Tucker smirked. Served him right, he thought, selfish prick. Won't help a buddy out. He turned to head towards the common room, reaching for a cigarette he had in his shirt pocket. As he turned, he felt something hit him almost gently in the chest.

Tucker was eye to eye with Ramon Oliphante, one of the Latin princes, and the King himself, Pablo Hinojosa, was standing behind him. Pablo was shaking his head slowly.

"Not today, _vato_. Not today." Pablo's voice was quiet and almost sad.

Tucker started to speak, to say something, to find the right line to get him the hell out of whatever was going down here tonight. No sound came, but his lips were wet and he felt the wetness covering his chin. He looked down, and saw Oliphante's hand, with a length of rigid wire wrapped around his wrist. The end of the wire, ground to an elliptical point like a cardiac needle, was somewhere three or four inches inside Tucker's chest.

He had felt the wire shiv driving home, that tap on his chest. He stared at the wire, at Oliphante's hand, at the blood dripping freely from his own lips. He looked up, past Oliphante to Pablo. Oliphante turned his wrist, seeking inside Tucker with the wire, and Tucker's puzzled expression suddenly went slack.

Tucker's body, brain still firing commands to the dying nervous system, slid slowly back, and Oliphante eased him back into the cell. Pablo followed them in and slid the door closed with a subdued clang. Oliphante stepped to the side with bored disinterest.

"Do please get up, Señor Stokes. We need to talk, you and I." Pablo stood, watching Stokes and ignoring Tucker's body shuddering it's last breath on the floor between them. "You can yell for the guards, if you think they will come. But either way, we'll be finished before they arrive."

- - -

_Cell 1138, Huntsville, Texas_

Nick Stokes sat on the edge of his bunk, his feet hanging over the end, watching the body of his cellmate bleeding on the concrete floor. From the small wound, there came surprisingly little blood. He tried to pry his eyes away, tried to look at the man who had killed Tucker, or at the Latino kingpin who was even now talking to him, but his eyes would not leave the man who just minutes ago had been pestering him for help with parole.

"Stokes, your father, he is Judge Stokes, yeah?" Pablo had seen the glazed expression before. He knew that Stokes heard him despite his apparent withdrawal.

"Yes. But there's... I can't make anything," Nick paused to collect himself.

"Your father put me here, Stokes." Pablo stepped forward and Nick finally looked away from Tucker, looking down into the cool dark eyes of Pablo Hinojosa. "So I owe you, Nick Stokes. And I want you to get what you have coming."

Pablo looked at Ramon, his assassin and enforcer. "Let him have it."

Nick dropped down from the bed to his feet, already knowing it was hopeless. Two on one, both hardened cons, in the small cell spelled certain failure. He raised his hands anyway.

"We have information for you," Ramon said in a surprisingly high and soft voice. A man with a voice like that in a place like this would need to be very tough indeed. Nick looked at him, trying to understand.

"One of our boys, he heard Tucker here telling Bobby the Wolf you were working with the guards, maybe with the cops. Bobby's boys were waiting for T to step out so they could punk you, maybe kill you outright."

"So why are you telling me this?" Nick looked from Ramon to Pablo. Pablo grinned, a gesture devoid of warmth, and spread his muscular arms in a shrug.

"Your father, he could have sent me to Death Row, but he knocked out some testimony from a piss-ant _perro_ they tried to say was one of my boys…" He grinned. "So, I got fifteen years instead of the needle. So, I figure I owe you one."

He lost his grin. "Plus, my nephew, Martin, tells me he has a new contact, lots of juice, maybe even a line in to the Aryans and the Italians, who think they are such hot shit. The next morning, my boys tell me Martin is dead. My sister, she cries all day, her little _niño_ shot dead in the street. I got thirteen more years, Stokes. Like I need this shit?"

"Down, down!" The voice boomed into the cell. Nick dropped after a moment of hesitation, falling like a sack of flour. Corrections Officers in full gear were deploying to either side of the cell door, riot guns with rubber bullets deployed at a range that could easily kill.

Pablo lowered himself to the floor like a panther coming to rest, and Ramon seemed to melt to the floor without occupying the intervening space. There was not sign of the wire he had used to kill Tucker. There was no sign of the Italians who moments ago had been cruising towards Stokes' cell with mayhem on their minds.

One of the guards, they never adequately discovered which one, shouted again, "I said down! Freeze!" Moments later, a shot, then quickly another, while the squad leader shouted, "Hold fire! Hold fire!"

The acrid smell of powder and blood and other smells from Tucker's relaxing bowels reached each adjoining cell before they had the mess sorted out.


	7. Chapter 7

_Cell 1886, Huntsville, Texas_

Otto stood, hands clasped casually behind his back, shoulders straight, head slightly tilting as he looked out over the cellblock. He had often seen pictures of the Fuhrer standing just so. Otto enjoyed the feeling of continuity with the glories of the past, and the discipline of the posture.

Behind the sleepy eyes, his agile mind was turning over information, trying combinations. Otto looked for the long haul, at the big picture. He was not about to throw himself into any plan just because a voice at the end of a phone suggested it.

Still, no matter how useful Nick Stokes might appear to be, he was just too good to be true. The Italians had promised to end him, and now Bobby the Wolf was trying to save face, because Stokes still lived. Pablo Hinojosa and his little snake of a sidekick, Oliphante, had actually made it into Stokes' cell, and Stokes still lived.

Now Oliphante was in solitary, Stokes was in the infirmary, and Hinojosa wasn't talking. Tucker was dead, who was no great loss though it bothered Otto anytime a white man, even a piece of degenerate dog shit like Tucker, was killed and a greaser like Oliphante or Hinojosa went free.

And then there was the guard, George, Stokes' contact. He'd talked, with Petersen working on him while his fellow guards walked their beats in he other direction for a while, or took an off-schedule smoke break, or just watched, enjoying the show. Petersen had made George talk in minutes, drained him of everything he knew. The last twenty minutes was just recreational.

George had two jobs, for Stokes. Bring code words to Stokes, of which George didn't know the meaning, Otto was sure. Get Stokes out and to the Warden's office on a signal from Stokes, so they could extract him from the prison when his undercover was over.

Otto had the word from the Detective: take Stokes down. If he could frame the Italians or the Latinos as originally planned, so much the better, but above all, take Stokes down.

"Petersen!" he called, still staring thoughtfully out over the cellblock.

"Yes, Otto?" The pale giant's voice was the model of subservience. He didn't have the spark of Hammacker or the flair of Stokes, but Petersen was one agreeable son of a bitch. A born soldier, an order-taker. Every good _Fuhrer _needed troops, Otto supposed.

"Stokes is in the infirmary. Take care of him. And Oliphante's in the Hole. That one we need to make look like the Spics taking care of their own business."

"Yes, Otto." Petersen stood, cracking his knuckles.

"Today?" Otto's scorn took Petersen down a peg as the albino left on his business. What a pussy, Otto thought. Where were all the real white men, honestly?

- - -

_Franklin Building, 204th Court, Dallas, Texas_

"Your Honor? I understand that your son is in the infirmary." The voice was solicitous.

"Is he?" Judge Stokes continued to read over the warrant request he had been handed earlier. "I'm sorry, Detective, but I don't pay attention one way or another what happens to that man."

The Detective nodded sympathetically.

"I understand. It must be… difficult, for you and Mrs. Stokes."

"Yeah," Stokes allowed, reaching for a pen.

The Detective had one wild thought, quickly subdued. A shot now, a quick escape before the Judge's body had hit the floor. Another round for the old fellow outside, the Judge's assistant, or he'd have the hounds out too quickly.

Just as quickly, the moment passed. The Detective had too much invested in removing Stokes to risk it all now. Nick's freedom had not worked. His life as leverage had not worked. But still, there was time, time to keep the drug money flowing in and keep the Judge and his minions off the scent. Another few weeks, maybe a month, and the Detective could disappear for good, to a nice beach where the sun was hot, the nights were cool, and the extradition treaties either nonexistent or unenforceable. There would be plenty of time to kill old Judge Stokes then, just before leaving

The Judge scrawled his illegible signature across the warrant.

"Here you go, Detective Sanchez."

The Detective smiled at him, the same smile she had used whenever she'd wanted to wheedle his son Nick, her old partner.

"Why thank you, Your Honor. Always a pleasure."

- - -

_Prison infirmary, Huntsville, Texas_

"Mr. Stokes?" The voice was soft, hushed. Almost friendly. Nick opened his eyes and blinked away tears. He wanted to wipe his eyes with the back of his hand but for some reason he could not lift his arms.

"Mr. Stokes? I'm Doctor Doyle. Do you remember where you are?" A face, soft-focused but vaguely familiar, swam into view, large eyes looking into his.

"Huntsville." His voice was rough and there was a weight like four men sitting on his chest.

"That's right," she said, sadly. "Can you tell me why you're here?"

"Prison?" he asked. He must have been intubated at some point, as he recognized the feeling in his throat more than he could place anything more immediate in his surroundings or recent history.

She frowned, and her brows drew together making a stark vertical line above her nose.

"Mr. Stokes, can you tell me why you were sent here?"

He ran his dry tongue over his lips, so cracked and dry themselves they seemed foreign to his tongue, like he was piloting by remote with no real sense of feedback. He tried to remember what was going on.

"How did I get… hospital?"

"You're in the infirmary in Huntsville, Mr. Stokes. You've taken a rubber bullet to the sternum, which stopped your breathing and gave your heart an irregular rhythm. You're breathing fine now but we need to keep you here to monitor your heart."

He looked around. He wanted to look down at the wires and IV lines and so forth attached to him, but he lacked the strength. Something was wrong though, he remembered that much. Something important.

"Why were you sent here, Mr. Stokes?" The doctor leaned in, her wide-set eyes blinking owlishly as she searched his face for answers. "Do you remember?"

"Fifth," he said, laying his head down. "Take… the fifth."

"Oh, Mr. Stokes. That's not really an option now, is it?" The doctor's face went away, and he blinked a few times, unable to focus on the off-white ceiling. His mind couldn't find any depth to his field of view, and with each beat of his heart the room teetered a bit with vertigo.

"There, that should help," Doyle said comfortingly, as if from far away. Nick felt a burning sensation in his hand that rapidly spread up his left arm. His eyes stopped watering and became suddenly itchy, and pins and needles went to work on his hand and wrist.

"Now, Mr. Stokes, tell me again why you are here." The face was there again, suddenly, and Nick opened his eyes wide with surprise.

"Convicted… of something." He shook his head slightly, eyes not leaving hers. "To get… inside."

"And why did you need to get inside, Mr. Stokes? Talk to me, tell me, it will be easier that way." She touched his shoulder, almost gently. "Why did you want to get inside?"

"To make… her. Come get me." He tried to look away, but his eyes were lost in hers, his head felt hot and he was starting to get tunnel vision.

"Who is coming to get you, Mr. Stokes?" She wasn't soft-voiced now. She was losing him, and had very little time to confirm her suspicions. "Tell me who is coming!"

"Marta." His eyes closed and he slumped back to his pillow. "Marta Sanchez."

His eyes rolled back, and his mouth went slack. His body, which had been straining against the leather restraints, relaxed into the thin mattress of the infirmary bed. More from reflex than from compassion, Doctor Doyle reached out and closed his eyes with her hand as she got up to call the Detective.

In Stokes' IV, just above where it entered the back of his hand, she left 2/3 of a syringe of scopolamine. It was an adequate truth serum, on par with sodium thiopental but much easier to acquire without arousing suspicion from her oversight board.

"Hello, Marta? It's Maggie."

- - -

_Six years earlier. Oaklawn neighborhood, Dallas, Texas_

"Oh, crap, Marta." Stokes looked at the young man handcuffed to the squad car, and back to his cousin, lying dead next to the car they had been trying to unlock. The keys were still dangling from the ignition in the locked car.

"Okay, Nick, look, here's what we have to do. You back me up on the gun, okay? You back me up, it's not a bad shoot. It's just a kid in the wrong damn place, wrong time to be carrying, okay?"

"I didn't see a gun, Sanchez." He was shaking his head, almost in tears. She took him by the shoulders and gave him a quick shake.

"Damn it, partner, pull yourself together. This was a good stop, it's not our fault."

He looked at her, a pained expression on his face. She reached under her jacket to the small of her back, and eyes still on him, she bent down and reached under the edge of the car. When she pulled her hand back after a moment, she held a small handgun.

"Look, Nick. A gun." Her voice was steady, her eyes never left his. "He must have dropped it."

"Sanchez, don't." He was whispering, pleading. This wasn't how he thought it was going to be, how it was supposed to be. But hadn't Captain Lewis told him to follow Sanchez? To take his lead from her, the rising star of the Dallas PD?

Still looking right at him and speaking softly, she took the gun and pressed it briefly to the hand of the dead youth at their feet. She then placed it on the ground between the body and the car.

"Terrible thing, Nicky. But if we let this take us down, the bad guys win."

"Please, don't." He was crying. His voice was gentle and even but the tears ran unnoticed down his cheeks.

"Now we wait for Infernal Affairs. This will be over soon, partner."

Nick's jaw muscles worked for a moment, like he was chewing something hard and bitter. He reached out and offered Sanchez his weapon. He took hers in exchange.

"They won't put a Stokes on the front page, Sanchez." He was stone faced and moved like a marionette missing some strings. He looked down at the dead young man. "Maybe I'm not cut out to be a cop, after all."

She smiled at him, and holstered his weapon. "That's my boy. Don't worry, Nicky. We'll get this all worked out, you'll see."

- - -

_Unmarked Dallas Police Car, outside the Franklin Building, Dallas, Texas._

She still remembered that day, the day she got Nick Stokes on the hook She'd hoped maybe someday to call in the marker from his father. That would have been a nice favor to have in her back pocket if she had been able to spin it.

"_Don't worry, Nicky. We'll get this all worked out, you'll see."_

Only it hadn't worked out. He'd been cleared of wrongdoing after a pro forma investigation. She had avoided even a black spot on her record, and continued on the fast track. When Stokes had quit the force and gone back to school, she'd continued to send him the occasional letter. His answers had been polite, brief, dry.

With each advance, she had moved onto a bigger and bigger stage, and dealt with more and more important perpetrators. It wasn't a year before she was in business for herself, courtesy of the people she did or did not take off the streets. She was as happy as a worm in an apple, and the only thing she worried about was that one day, Nick Stokes would try to set the record straight.

When she had heard that he was going to be charged with crimes, many of which she had been responsible for, her first thought had been that it was a trap. Still, she'd bided her time, and been shocked to see Stokes actually going to prison. She had as many contacts inside as out, and it had been so tempting to have him ended before he stepped off the bus.

Still, she was cautious. Just a few more months and she could retire. Maybe take a day and kill the people she thought needed killing, or just had pissed her off, then off to the islands. She already had her new bathing suit picked out.

But now Stokes was fishing, trying to draw her out, and it had almost worked. Still, with Stokes dead, it would take days to sort out what had gone down, and by then she'd be gone. She'd just have to forgo the first class ticket and she could leave today.

"Marta? What about Stokes?"

She had forgotten the cell phone in her hand, her mind racing over the past, and looking towards the future. She forced her attention back to the phone, one of the disposable, almost untraceable tools she relied on for this side of her business.

"Clean up any evidence, and see if you can get him cremated before the investigation starts. A tragic mistake in paperwork, whatever."

"Whatever you say, honey."

Whatever I say, she thought. A charmingly simple philosophy. Especially for a doctor who had needed a new and very authentic-looking medical license after she came out of drug rehab, who was willing to work for a year or two in the prison, doing the occasional favor in order to build legitimate cover. Doyle was mostly sober now, but she was also almost pathetically willing to do whatever it took to make Sanchez happy, in bed or out.

"See you soon, doll," Sanchez lied smoothly. Doctor Maggie Doyle still thought there was going to be a ticket to sunny climes and high living waiting for her when this was over. Foolish little dyke, Sanchez smiled as she threw the phone casually out the window towards a trash can.

Marta Sanchez wasn't interested in taking care of anyone but Marta Sanchez. And there was just about time to pick up her new bathing suit and pack before she collected her last payments and left town. She pulled away from the curb and headed towards the Galleria, smiling at the thought of Maggie Doyle taking care of the last unfinished business on her list. Once she got to the airport, Sanchez would call Otto to take care of Maggie Doyle.


	8. Chapter 8

_Prison infirmary, Huntsville, Texas_

"Sorry, Mr. Stokes. I'm afraid that your recovery isn't going as…" Doyle stopped, looking at Stokes' IV. The syringe was missing.

"Well, what the…" She put a hand on the bed rail as he bent and looked under the bed, to see if the syringe had dislodged somehow. There was a sudden sting in her hand, and she looked up.

Stokes was sitting up, as much as he could, and his arm was flexed, the muscles standing out sharply, the restraints that had been loose now taught against the steel frame. He was looking at her hand, his eyes open wide and his mouth a grim line.

She followed his gaze and saw, palmed in his hand, the missing syringe, which he must have shaken out of his IV while she was on the phone. With a grunt, he flexed his biceps and the strap cut into his wrist, and the edge of the plunger on the syringe pushed against the bed frame.

"No, no," she gasped, watching the thick liquid surging through the needle into her hand. Almost immediately she felt the burning, itchy fire of the drug crawling up her arm. The needle must have hit the ulnar artery in her hand- she could feel it spreading into her system, a massive dose as the syringe drained directly into her.

She took a step back, and pulled the needle from her hand, dropping it at her feet.

"That was… oh, you bastard," she said, still backing away. She put out her hands as if to steady herself, then suddenly pitched over to her right as she overbalanced. She collided with a tray of instruments, and they all collapsed with her to the floor with a huge clatter and crash.

"You bastard," she said again, thickly, looking up at him from the floor where she sat. There was something long and dully gleaming sticking at an angle out of her right thigh, and bright arterial blood arced thirty or forty centimeters to the side with each beat of her heart. She looked down, confused, at the pool of blood rapidly spreading around her.

Nick, still trying to free himself from the straps on the bed, could only watch as she bled out. He tried to call out, but he was still so hoarse that only a soft croaking emerged. He watched as she tried to put her hand over the wound, but she was too disoriented from the scopolamine to do much more than cover her hands in her own blood.

"You bastard," she said again, sadly.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, honestly, to her. He didn't know if she heard, but she slipped over, her eyes still open. The blood stopped spurting from her leg and began to seep and pool around her. She was gone.

Nick strained at the bonds that held him, and gave up pulling against them with a sigh. When he opened his eyes, there was someone moving towards him, a patient from the bed across the infirmary from him. He was wearing a paper gown, spotted with dried blood, and his face was a mass of bruises and cuts, with a bandage over one eye lending a piratical air.

As he closed with Stokes, the shambling man reached down and picked something up off a tray that had not fallen over with Doctor Doyle. He raised his hand to Nick's face, and laughed, a wet, painful chuckle. In his hand, he held a scalpel, its blued steel blade short and wicked, reflecting the pool of blood at the man's feet where Doctor Doyle lay dead. He reached towards Nick with the blade.

- - -

_CSI Office, Las Vegas, Nevada_

Gil Grissom regarded his nominal supervisor coolly. His tone was somehow both detached and demanding.

"Conrad, we can't go on like this for much longer. We have to know what's happening."

Ecklie bit back a sarcastic reply.

"Well, Gil," he said at last, "when I have approval to bring someone in to replace Stokes, you'll know." He shrugged indifferently.

"Right." Grissom seemed somewhat deflated, lacking his usual joy in sparring with Ecklie. The entire second and third shift had been working long hours, covering for the shortage of Stokes. Grissom turned and stalked back to his office.

Once the door was closed, Ecklie took a worn business card out of his shirt pocket and dialed the number written there.

"District Attorney's Office," said the generically helpful voice.

"Extension 214, please," Ecklie said. Once he was connected, he asked tiredly, "How much longer is this going to go on?"

"It takes as long as it takes, Mr. Ecklie."

"They're pushing me to replace Stokes. I can't stall forever."

"Well, even when this is over, you might be short handed a little while. Get me the cost to bring in some temp help, we have some budget left."

"Yeah, that's fine. But just bring our guy back to us, alright?"

Ecklie was staring out the small window of his office long after conversation ended, wondering what things must be like for Nick Stokes right about then.

- - -

_Prison infirmary, Huntsville, Texas_

With one quick slash of a scalpel, the bloody figure that had been lumbering towards the restrained form of Nick Stokes cut through the ties of Stokes' restraining strap. When Stokes jerked his arm away, the man realized how he must appear to Stokes.

He took a half step backwards, swaying in the pain of his many injuries.

"Do?" he hissed between broken teeth. "Miss… sauce?"

Stokes looked at him in shock. The code phrase, that stupid code phrase.

"Not as much as I missed you. God, what did they…" He faltered. The man before him had until recently been a fit, no nonsense prison guard. Now he was a ruined mass of cuts, bruises already turning nasty yellow and purple, and most likely a lost eye, maybe two.

"Dave," whispered the guard, "Dave George." He handed Stokes the scalpel so the younger man could finish freeing himself.

"We have to call the warden, Dave, we have to get ourselves out of this place."

With the broken fingers of his other hand, Officer George slowly raised something that looked like a car remote entry fob.

"Panic button," he said with effort, "They… already coming."

Stokes released himself from the bed, and then went over to look at the fallen body of Doctor Doyle. She had bled out from a punctured femoral vein, and was quite dead.

"Well, Dave, let's get the fuck out of Dodge," Stokes said, just as the Warden and two of his personal guards burst into the clinic, calling for Stokes and George.

- - -

_DFW International Airport terminal, Irving, Texas_

Marta Sanchez left her keys in the ignition of her car, the doors unlocked, as she entered the terminal at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The car would most likely disappear, just as she was about to do. One less worry.

She looked carefully up and down the curbside check in area for familiar faces, and, spotting none, she took care of her last bit of business. She dropped her service pistol and her last-used cell phone, both wrapped in a copy of the Morning News, into a trash can as she slipped into the airport.

Even for someone like Sanchez, it just wasn't worth trying to get a gun onto a plane, post 9-11. She'd call when she hit the island, and arm up before visiting the offshore bank where must of her money was heading.

She entered the terminal building and cleared the security checkpoint with the boarding pass she had printed from her home computer. In seven hours, give or take, she would be on the beach, and maybe she'd make a phone call or two and make Judge Stokes as dead as his little boy. She smiled to herself as the gate agent noted her pass.

"Ma'am? First Class is not full on this flight. Would you like me to see if we can get you upgraded?" The woman had kind eyes in a bland brown face. She looked just a little like Marta's _abuela_, Rosalin.

"Why yes, that would be great." She shifted her bag, with a laptop and a few thousand dollars walking-around money, to her shoulder as she handed over her boarding pass. First class after all. This was more like it.

"Why don't you please come with me? You can wait in the First Class lounge while I get that taken care of for you, Ma'am." The woman led her past the Commodore's Club to a door marked "Empire Service."

Marta smiled as she passed through the revolving door into the lounge. It looked like she was finally going to get the kind of treatment she deserved.

- - -

_Security Area, DFW International Airport, Irving, Texas._

"Hold your fire, men," the SWAT officer said softly into his throat mike as the revolving door began to turn. Once it had revolved 180 degrees, the security door locked as forged steel bolts dropped into place along its edge. The occupant of the door chamber stumbled slightly as she came into the room.

"Marta Sanchez, you are under arrest!" The SWAT commander's voice was clear and decisive. "Stay where you are and put your hands on your head!"

Sanchez, a look of confused betrayal flickering briefly across her face, backed against the unmoving door. She looked frantically around for an escape from the five armed men facing her in the concrete and steel pillar constructed security room. She turned and put a shoulder to the door, clawing with her hands at the locking bar.

"I said stay where you are, God damn it!" The SWAT commander shook his head. "Packman, one round!" He flinched slightly but kept his eyes on the target as he heard the "Whumpf!" of a tactical grenade going past him.

Sanchez collapsed in the cloud of pepper gas, her eyes streaming tears and her mouth filled with adrenaline and bile. Within six minutes, she had been apprehended, searched, cuffed, and moved into a secure transport. The air was already clearing in the security room when the SWAT transport cleared the airport perimeter, heading for the concrete honeycomb block of Dallas' Lou Sterret county jail.

Her cursing, neither clear nor particularly inventive, was audible from the back of the transport as they rolled onto the LBJ Expressway. The commander smiled as he made his report via secure radio.

- - -

_Ben Taub Hospital, Houston, Texas, one week later._

"Hey, sleepyhead, you got a visitor."

Lauren Stokes' voice was soft, dry, but still so much stronger than he could remember it being in a long time. She was in a wheelchair next to his bed, but when she thought no one was looking she could take short walks around his room. All things considered, it was amazing.

Still, being her brother, her little brother at that, Nick couldn't do the miracle true justice. He lay in his hospital bed, idly counting drops of antibiotics as they fell in his IV. He pretended not to hear her.

"Well, I'm going to go find someone who's actually sick to bother, brother. See ya." She mimed throwing a pillow at him, and he almost smiled.

As she left, he noticed someone else coming in, but he was too lost in his own thoughts to pay much attention. There was a soft rustling of clothing as the visitor settled, but nothing was said.

At last, his guest spoke.

"You look like shit, Nicky. We need to get you back home to Vegas."

Stokes turned, surprised. "Warrick? What are you… when?"

"I just got in. We're going to be here for a few days, help you get all the paperwork straightened out so we can get you back home and back on the job, when you're ready."

"Oh man," Stokes breathed closing his eyes and picturing Vegas like the rainbow's end. "I am so ready to go home. I missed you guys."

"I know, Nick." Warrick looked down. "The DA who ran this whole thing, he briefed Grissom himself yesterday, and Gris sent us to help you come home."

"Wait, us? Who's here?"

"Catherine and I, just for a few days. I know they won't release you till tomorrow at the earliest anyway." Was that a trace of a grin on Warrick's face?

"Traveling with Catherine, that must be interesting," Nick nodded to himself. He was sure he wasn't imagining Warrick's quickly suppressed grin.

"It has advantages," Warrick confirmed blandly. "So, they're supposed to take you downstairs in an hour or so, then once they're sure everything is okay, looks like tomorrow you get out?"

"Downstairs? But I'm done with everything except…" he paled, and his hand went of it's own volition to the side of his head, where the prominent swastika was still visible through his short hair.

"Hey, Warrick, about that. Listen," Nick looked like he was going to be sick. Warrick wondered how he'd ever pulled off an undercover.

"It's okay, Nick. The DA told me all about it, and they'll be taking it off pretty well. Since it was a rush job, there might be a little scarring but none of the pigment will be left, they promised me."

"I just never wanted you to think, well." Nick sat for a minute. "Thanks, man."

"Sure thing, bro." Warrick checked his watch. "Unless you need anything, I'm going to go check in, make a few calls and whatnot. See what Catherine's up to. See you in the morning?"

"Yeah, thanks. I can't wait."

Warrick touched his arm, giving is bicep something between a pat and a squeeze.

"Get better. See you tomorrow. Oh, and the DA's outside. You want him to come back or can he pop in for a minute?"

"Sure, thanks."

The DA entered a few minutes after Warrick left, which was helpful, as Nick still wanted a moment to regain his composure. The thought of finally going home was getting to him, along with all that had happened over the last few months.

"Officer Stokes, I wanted to tell you again, thank you for all your work on this case. I know it was hard on you, and your family." The DA, a trim, intense young black man wore a suit with a small Texas flag pin in his lapel.

"Nick," Stokes said firmly. "Call me Nick."

"Nick." The DA nodded, and after questioning with his eyes, sat at the edge of the bed. "Well, Nick, after all we've been through, I suppose a first name basis won't do any harm."

"I suppose not, Marcellus. I suppose not."

-fin-


End file.
